General Lee saving Richmond led to a resurgence in Southern optimism. The Lincoln administration called for “a new appeal for recruits” (491), although they were careful not to make it look like a response to the failure of the siege of Richmond. Northern recruitment was based on generous bounties paid for soldiers and a law that let Lincoln enlist state militias for a nine-month period, which constituted a “quasi-draft” (492). Pro-Confederacy Democrats were arrested for resisting or encouraging defiance of even the quasi-draft.

By 1862, there were three factions in the Republican Party, all defined by the issue of enslavement. One was the radicals, who supported the national abolishment of enslavement using the seizure of enemy property as the legal pretext. Another was the conservatives, who did want abolition but only with the consent of the Southern states and along with a policy of African Americans being sent to colonies overseas. Finally, there was Lincoln’s faction, the moderates, “who shared the radicals’ moral aversion to slavery but feared the racial consequences of wholesale emancipation” (494).

As the war went on, abolitionist arguments gained more influence with the moderate faction. Most moderate Republicans came to believe that the war could only be ended with African-American emancipation. The Republican Congress enacted several measures prohibiting enslavement in the territories and Washington, DC, and negotiated a treaty with Britain for greater cooperation in suppressing the enslavement trade. Nonetheless, while most Northern soldiers opposed enslavement, “only a minority in 1862 felt any interest in fighting for black freedom” (497).

Lincoln experimented with the idea of financially compensating the border states for abolishing enslavement, although politicians in the pro-enslavement states that remained loyal retained an unrealistic hope that the Civil War could end with the preservation of enslavement. Meanwhile, congressional legislation left open the possibility that African Americans could be enlisted in the Union army as soldiers. The Confiscation Act of 1862 cemented the policy of treating formerly enslaved persons as confiscated property and setting them free, although the law was written in a flawed way due to the “confusion […] from the dual character of the Civil War as a domestic insurrection and as a war” (500).

Northern anger toward Southerners was also escalating. In Virginia, John Pope issued orders that Union soldiers could confiscate Confederate property without compensation. Pope also allowed for guerillas to be shot without trial and to exile civilians who refused to take an oath of loyalty to the Union, but these were not implemented yet. Union officers and soldiers also supported policies of seizing or destroying Southern property for “purposeful” and “even […] ideological” (501) reasons.

Lincoln became fully convinced by the summer of 1862 that abolishing enslavement was necessary. After efforts to compromise on the issue of emancipation with conservative Republicans floundered, Lincoln began planning what would become the Emancipation Proclamation. Meanwhile, the issues of enslavement and race caused political divisions among Democrats. War Democrats opposed emancipation but believed that it was necessary to crush the Confederacy in war. Peace Democrats (also called Copperheads) wanted the Union to be restored through negotiation and compromise. With freed African Americans arriving in the North and with Democratic and conservative Republican rhetoric against so-called Black Republicans, “anti-black riots broke out” in several Northern cities “during the summer of 1862” (507).

Some Republicans, including Lincoln, believed that racial prejudice was insurmountable and that African Americans should be encouraged to relocate to American colonies in Central America. Frederick Douglass and other Black leaders bitterly opposed such proposals, and many radical Republicans found the idea “racist and inhumane” (509). Even so, the US Congress raised money for colonization projects, although colonization efforts in Haiti and Central America failed or were opposed by local national governments. Despite this, Lincoln had decided that emancipation was needed for a Union victory.

While stationed in Corinth, Mississippi, General Halleck sought to next capture Vicksburg, Mississippi, drive the Confederacy out of eastern Tennessee, restore the railroads and the Union supply line, and protect and oversee Unionists and freed formerly enslaved persons in the occupied regions of Tennessee. Halleck focused on the latter three rather than attacking Vicksburg, a decision that has been criticized by some historians. However, McPherson counters that Halleck was facing a supply problem due to a drought, leaving any Union army in Mississippi especially vulnerable to raiders.

Using guerilla tactics, especially the destruction of railroads, the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest “immobilized” a Union army “of forty thousand” (514) led by Don Carlos Buell and sent by Halleck into eastern Tennessee. Meanwhile, General Baxter Bragg’s Confederate army occupied the cities of Lexington and Frankfort in Kentucky. However, due to a lack of support from local civilians and not having enough men, Bragg could not impose a permanent occupation over Kentucky and had to withdraw. Buell was still reluctant to pursue Bragg’s army and go in for the kill, so Lincoln replaced him with William Rosecrans.

In Mississippi, Grant managed to stop another attempt by a Confederate army to counterattack the Union. Bragg’s decision to retreat was partially because of this failure. Even then, the Confederacy also launched an invasion of the North in Virginia, led by Lee and Jackson. The Battle of Bull Run or Second Manassas ended with Union forces being routed. The Union army went from being “only twenty miles from Richmond” to “twenty miles from Washington, where the rebels seemed poised for the kill” (532). Even then, Lincoln felt he could not dismiss McClellan, given his ability to quickly rally the troops.

Jackson’s forces were able to easily capture the federal artillery at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, proving that “northern morale” (538) had declined. Further north, in September of 1862, the Confederate and Union forces fought again at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland, which was “among the hardest” fighting “of the war” (540). The battle ended with a Union victory and the Confederates being driven back south with almost “one-third of the rebels who marched into Maryland” (545) killed. It was “one of the war’s great turning points” (545).

Confederate victories during the summer months of 1862 “revived Confederate hopes for European diplomatic recognition” (546). British sympathy for the Confederacy increased; the British government did not stop blockade-running ships from being built in Liverpool despite Britain’s official stance of neutrality, and the South’s cotton blockade was beginning to affect the British economy. President Louis Napoleon of France (soon-to-be Emperor Napoleon III) considered offering the Confederacy support in exchange for help in a French takeover of Mexico.

Still, British public opinion was divided on the Civil War. Although historians have questioned this assertion, McPherson agrees that the working-class and their sympathizers, including Karl Marx, tended to take the side of the Union, since it represented democratic values, while the British aristocracy sympathized with the Confederacy, seen as embodying old ideas of hierarchy and “privilege” (549), or at least detested the democratic and egalitarian values professed by the Unionists. There were exceptions, though, like the Duke of Argyll, who lobbied for the Union cause or numerous British liberals and radicals who backed the Confederacy on the principle of national independence. Furthermore, the fact that Britain had abolished enslavement in its own colonies and had outlawed the Transatlantic enslavement trade meant that, for many British, to “support a rebellion in behalf of slavery would be un-British” (552). However, it also meant some British had a difficult time sympathizing with the Union as long as it refused to abolish enslavement.

As for France, Louis Napoleon had sent troops into Mexico to turn Mexico into a French colony. The Confederacy offered cotton supplies and an alliance against the Mexican government of Benito Juarez in exchange for recognition and naval support against the Union’s blockades. Unfortunately for the Confederacy, Louis Napoleon was afraid of alienating the United States, which made him reluctant to recognize the Confederacy unless Britain did so first.

Confederate victories made British and French recognition more likely since the British prime minister Lord Palmerston believed the Confederacy had to prove it would survive. The idea was floated that a coalition of European nations, in the interest of reopening cotton supplies from the South, could pressure the Union into accepting their mediation, which “would be tantamount to recognition of Confederate independence” (555). The defeat at Antietam made such a possibility even more unlikely. A proposal to recognize the Confederacy was rejected in the British government, as was a French attempt to get Britain and Russia to agree to force the Union to suspend hostilities and the blockade for six months.

The Battle of Antietam also convinced Lincoln to “issue his Emancipation Proclamation” (557). Since Lincoln “had no constitutional power to act against slavery in areas loyal to the United States” (558), it only freed enslaved persons from Confederate states on the principle that the president was empowered as commander-in-chief of the United States military “to seize enemy resources” (558). Rank-and-file soldiers supported the Emancipation Proclamation mostly just to completely crush the Confederacy. Democrats angrily rejected it and “scored significant gains in the 1862 elections” (561).

Nonetheless, Republicans remained in control of the United States and adopted more abolitionist ideas. Lincoln formalized the final version of the Emancipation Proclamation, which ended enslavement in all of the states that had joined the Southern rebellion and also allowed Black soldiers and sailors to join the Union military. Although there was a racist backlash to this in the North and Black recruits faced discrimination, McPherson believes this still represented “the transformation of a war to preserve the Union into a revolution to overthrow the old order” (565).

The Emancipation Proclamation also improved British public support for the Union, as “British antislavery sentiment mobilized for the Union” (567).

In the Union war effort, McClellan still showed his characteristic reluctance to face the Confederacy in open combat, giving General Lee time to reinforce Richmond’s defenses. Exasperated, Lincoln finally fired McClellan and replaced him with General Ambrose Burnside, who confronted Lee’s army at Fredericksburg, Virginia. The Battle of Fredericksburg ended in “one of the worst defeats of the war” (572).

Lincoln faced pressure from the Senate to purge his cabinet of the controversial Secretary of State Seward in a scheme that was masterminded by his Secretary of the Treasury, Chase, who hoped to improve his own prospects as a future presidential candidate. Lincoln handled it in a way that left both Chase and Seward in office and made him “master of the situation” (575).

In the South, Davis faced mounting criticism and his own failing health. Matters were not helped by Davis’s disagreements with the popular general Johnston over military tactics. Still, the Confederacy enjoyed some victories, which forced General Grant to give up trying to capture Vicksburg, Mississippi. Lincoln swapped out Burnside for General Joseph Hooker, who was “a popular choice with the men” (585).

In Mississippi, Grant’s soldiers suffered from wet, muddy conditions and disease. There were rumors that Grant was succumbing to alcohol dependency. While today it is classified as an illness, at the time alcohol dependency “was considered a moral weakness” (589). McPherson suggests that possibly his struggles with alcohol dependency gave Grant a “self-discipline” (589) that made him a better general. Either way, Grant was well-liked by both the rank and file and by Charles A. Dana, an agent Lincoln sent to assess Grant and his army.